Teaching Children
You've really got to wonder, sometimes, about the calibre of people engaged in the teaching profession, most particularly those entrusted to engage young minds in the wonder of discovery and the pleasures of acquiring information. Some teachers have the capability to relate to children, to enthuse them with their own enthusiasm for learning, but many don't, and that's a pity. I wonder how many adults can recall even one teacher throughout their early learning years with whom they were able to share a teacher-pupil bond where the former exposed the latter to mind-expanding opportunities and the latter recognized the value of the opportunies offered. I can't think of even one. I do recall feeling lost, inadequate, and incapable in my early learning years. Can it be possible that throughout my formative learning years I had not one teacher sufficiently able and interested in creating learning opportunities for their charges?Just up the street from us lives a family, a young married couple with twins aged twelve, a boy and a girl. The father is an IT professional who 'lost' his business during the IT upheaval and hasn't been employed in a position which might reflect his knowledge ever since. He works at a call centre. The mother recently completed teachers' college and is looking for permanent work as a primary school teacher, has been for the past three years, while working on call. She has ambitions for her children, wants to expose them to various learning opportunities, and has them both enrolled in French immersion in the separate school board.
Three days ago, working at my front garden, the little girl (hardly "little" in the physical sense as she stands a head taller than me) happened by on her way home from school and stopped to play with one of our dogs. I noted that she had a school project rolled up in her hand, a paperboard festooned with pasted-on photographs, a French-language "denizens of our forests" project. I asked to look at it, told her I thought she'd done a really neat job. Photographs of various beetles, snakes, and animals. I asked if she knew the names of the various types of beetles, for I did, but she professed not to know; it was just a notional group.
Why, I asked her, did she have a cut-out of this animal on her project? She looked puzzled, and didn't quite understand what I was getting at. There was a magazine cut-out of a deer, one of a squirrel, another of a rabbit, and also a hedgehog. That's a hedgehog, I said, Canada doesn't have any native hedgehogs. Yes we do! she asserted. They climb trees and peel and eat the bark. A porcupine, I said to her, that's a porcupine you mean. Hedgehogs are native to Great Britain, and to Africa, and elsewhere as well, but not Canada. Oh, she said, immediately disinterested. Her project was neatly done, her captions very nice, and everything was neatly ticked off by the teacher, in approval.
This bright and cheerful girl was taking keyboard lessons as a favour to her mother, from another neighbour. She showed up for the first few lessons, then began to miss the following lessons. The neighbour who so kindly had agreed to give the lessons awaited the girl's arrival at the appointed time. One lesson after another, missed. Finally, the neighbour told the girl it was all right if she hadn't felt like coming for her lesson, but why hadn't she called to let her know? This same neighbour has a habit of giving birthday gifts to children on the street with whom she is familiar. Not once has this child or her brother thanked this neighbour for her generosity.
So what, for heaven's sake, are these children being taught?
posted by Pieface @ Friday, May 26, 2006
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